The 6 Most Pointless Supervillain Schemes Ever Hatched

#3. Switching Bodies with a Blind Guy

As part of a scheme to destroy the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom employs the classic "switching bodies with your deadly enemy" plot. This is one of the oldest tricks in the super villain playbook. You can soil his good reputation by committing evil deeds, freely make out with his wife or girlfriend and then plaster the Internet with the resulting photographs. The one way to screw this up would be to choose the only superhero who, in addition to having no powers, happens to be blind.

Or happens to be Aquaman.

The first stage of Doom's plan is defeating Daredevil in combat, which literally takes him about 15 seconds. Doom even remarks that he doesn't normally fight with his fists, but it would be a shame to "waste [his] senses-staggering weapons on one so weak." With that accomplished, Doom grabs Daredevil's weak body and takes him over to his lair to switch bodies with him.

After the bodies are swapped, Daredevil finds himself trapped in Doom's body and locked inside a cell. Of course, "trapped" is a relative term, since he's controlling Doom's super-strong body now and should logically be able to overpower his captor in no time. Also, for a blind guy, he seems relatively downbeat about having his sense of sight restored.

"Encased in metal gloves"? How about "My hands -- I can fucking see them!!!"

Using Daredevil's body, Doom plans to kill the Fantastic Four. He never explains how he plans to defeat four guys with actual superpowers using a body he himself called "weak" and a "puny, trivial nuisance." But it's all worth it, because he now has Daredevils power of ... being blind? Doom could have accomplished a way more effective version of this same plan by keeping his super powers, putting on a Daredevil costume and fighting the Fantastic Four with his eyes closed.

Meanwhile, Daredevil manages to persuade Doom's henchmen to free him, which is easy since Doom never mentioned any of this body-switching business to them.

He proceeds to have the time of his life with his new indestructible armor and dozens of super-high-tech weapons, along with "unlimited diplomatic immunity" since Doom is the leader of his own nation. Also -- and we can't emphasize this enough -- he can freaking see again!

This is the happiest day of Daredevil's life.

Upon hearing that Daredevil isn't acting all blind anymore, Doom rushes back to his mansion and switches bodies with him, which means that unfortunately we never get to see the Fantastic Four beat up a blind guy.

#2. Making Milk Expensive to Weaken America

In this story from 1942, Wonder Woman's alter ego, Diana Prince, notices how expensive milk has gotten and decides that pure evil must be afoot.

"Outrageous prices? Call Wonder Woman!"

Prince goes directly to the president of the International Milk Co., who helpfully explains that his company has an illegal monopoly on milk. In case she's doubting her initial diagnosis of evil, for absolutely no reason he then does this ...

He'd been dying to use that thing.

After changing into Wonder Woman she still feels it's necessary to call her boss, since this is 1942. Later, she finds out the Nazis are behind this despicable deed; more specifically, her old enemy Baroness Von Gunther.

"Great calamity kittens" has never been used outside this comic. We feel it's time to correct that.

The Baroness had previously been executed for her crimes, but she was returned to life using advanced Nazi technology, all so she could unfurl her diabolical scheme.

Great calamity kittens! This is about to turn into a porn movie.

By spending millions of Nazi dollars buying all the milk companies in America, she can raise the price of milk, thus weakening the bones of every poor kid in America. Then, in 20 years or so, America will be so weak that the strong-boned Germans will just stroll in and start running the place.

Our first question is: Why sell the milk at all? If she really owns all the milk then it would make a lot more sense to simply keep it. Second question: HOLY SHIT, NAZIS ARE IMMORTAL!!! That's more of an exclamation, but still. If the Nazis have perfected a machine that brings dead people back to life, why are they bothering with milk? How about bringing all your dead soldiers back to life instead and completely demolishing the Allies in the actual war?

Hell, selectively zap the cemeteries in the southern half of America, and the country you're trying to weaken is suddenly fighting the Civil War a second time.

Or bring back the slaves and Native Americans. America goes from being united against the worst enemy in world history to facing a zombie horde that the rest of the world would have to admit had a reason to be pissed.

Or, make milk expensive. It's really six of one and a half-dozen of the other.

Spider-Man's Clone Saga is to Marvel Comics what World War II is to Germany -- they try their best to pretend they never did something so awful, because that's the only way to continue living. What makes this particular evil scheme so horrible is that it didn't happen on a single issue: It took place over 20 years of Spider-Man comics. It all started in a 1975 issue where a mad scientist creates a perfect duplicate of Spidey:

"I'M GOING TO PUNCH--"

The clone turns out to be a pretty fly dude, (since he was a perfect duplicate and all) but he still ends up dead by next issue. That would've been the end of the story, if 20 years later Spider-Man writers hadn't decided to shake things up by bringing back the clone ... and revealing that he was actually the original.

Peter himself did a blood test and confirmed this. So, basically, Spidey fans had been buying The Amazing Spider-Clone for the past 20 years, without their knowledge. The Spider-Man who dated Mary Jane, got married, and fought guys like Venom? Sorry, that was a fake. The original had become a drifter, presumably surviving by performing sex acts on other hobos. Now that the truth was out, Peter Parker retired from web-slinging while the original (who had adopted the name Ben Reilly) became Spider-Man once again.

Shockingly, readers weren't thrilled about this development, because apparently having your childhood heroes shat upon isn't popular. So after a year or so in which Ben Reilly was Spider-Man, the writers had to come up with a way to explain everything away, and they did this by revealing that the whole thing had been part of an evil scheme by the Green Goblin ... who was supposed to be dead at the time, but that's the least-confusing part of this story.

This sentence goes on for 20 pages.

It turns out the Goblin came back to life right after his death in a classic Spidey comic way back in 1972. Feeling pretty ticked off over the whole "dying" thing, he devised a long plan to torture Spider-Man psychologically by making him doubt himself (as if he didn't do that already in every issue). The first thing he did was order a clone of Peter Parker: not an evil clone, but an exact duplicate with all his memories and abilities and that same urge to fight evil while making bad puns. So the Goblin enacted his revenge by... doubling his own enemies.

But that's just part one of the plan. Part two involves having Spider-Man meet the clone, letting it become a drifter for a few years, arranging his return to New York and rigging some blood tests to convince Peter that the other guy is the original.

What happened to "breaking his legs"?

To what end? Causing Spider-Man mental stress and hoping he develops an ulcer, apparently. But wait -- doesn't Spider-Man sort of hate his job? If there's another one out there, then Peter can just retire and live happily with his wife ... which is exactly what he did. Even better: If he's not the real Peter this means he's not technically responsible for the death of Uncle Ben, which is the source of every bad thing that's happened in his life. Instead of tormenting Spider-Man, the Goblin made him happy for the first time since he was a kid. Brilliant plan!

Peter eventually learns he's the real thing and gets back into the crime-fighting game, meaning that the only real result that the Goblin got from this plan was giving Spider-Man a much-deserved vacation. If only more supervillains were so considerate.